In recent years, with the growing awareness of betterment of the environment, improvement in the fuel efficiency of vehicles has become a very important subject. In a contest competing over the travelling distance on one liter of gasoline, a method of causing a vehicle to travel under its own inertia, after first accelerating the vehicle through the engine output, without driving the wheels though the engine output or decelerating though regeneration is known to be effective.
For example, Patent Literature 1 discloses a vehicle control device applied to a hybrid vehicle using both a gasoline engine and an electric motor for power, including non-regeneration and non-acceleration travel pattern generating means for generating a non-regeneration non-acceleration travel pattern which is a travel speed pattern in a case where non-regeneration non-acceleration travel, in which neither acceleration by the engine nor regeneration are performed, is performed; target travel speed pattern generating means for generating a target travel speed pattern which is the target speed in a deceleration target position located to the front in the travel direction based on the generated non-regeneration non-acceleration travel pattern; and control means for controlling the travel speed of the vehicle based on the generated target travel speed pattern. Since the convenience demanded by many general users is satisfied if average speed is maintained, a technology which improves fuel efficiency while maintaining average speed is preferable in society.